This is a submission from a student in our second most advanced class. The assignment was topic was to write about what a fly that lived in your wall for a week would see.

This student seems to have independently invented existentialist poetry.

Being chased by a dog in the first day is a metaphor for the traumatic experiences of childhood and the ever-present Sword of Damocles which is adulthood.

Looking for food and almost dying on the second day is a commentary on starvation in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian sub-continent created by the empty material excess of the developed world.

The third and fourth days being merely “normal life” are the existential ennui we all experience in our safe-but-boring post-industrial lives as desk jockeys. Our lives are merely normal and nothing more.

The last two days being vacation symbolize the pointless prolonging of life which has come to define modern medicine. We force the elderly to live painful, tortured existences long after they should have died in a futile attempt to fight our own fear of mortality.

The end is, of course, death. For it is ever so.

Or a lazy student rushed an outline in about 30 seconds right before school. Could be either one.

Today I bring you another episode of “My Students Might Be Trolling Me. As always, here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. In this week’s episode, I was gifted a wonderful essay response from my co-worker, Edward’s, class. The topic is, what would you like to be when you are older?

“The best way to honor anyone named Your Honor is to…”

Ya, I mean, I have heard a ton of strange things that people want to be when they are older. My eldest brother is a legend around our house because he wanted to be “The Chicken-Noodle Man” when he was older. That, and to never have to eat zucchini. Myself, I wanted to be a ninja riding a velociraptor, but hey, sometimes life just doesn’t care what you want. This student doesn’t really have anything he wants to be when he is older, but he definitely knows that he wants to give a blow…big thank you to those serving in the Justice system. You gotta respect a kid, who really…and I mean REALLY loves the law. Is it weird that the part of this photo that I love the most is that Edward wrote “Indent” with an arrow on the first draft, and the student wrote “Indent” as the first word of his paper. THAT, is why vocabulary is the first and most important in learning a new language.

Side note: As I will be taking my show on the road in the short future, I am thinking about opening Adventures in Redefinition to other teachers here in Korea so we can keep the magic going. If you, or someone you know, would like to post, write a comment below and I will get you started.

Today I bring you another episode of “My Students Might Be Trolling Me. As always, here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5. In this episode the homework assignment was to learn about all the characteristics of a myth using the short story about King Gilgamesh, Do or Die. Some of these characteristics include topics such as “Gods and Goddesses,” “Supernatural Powers,” “Monsters,” “Natural Occurrences,” “Metamorphoses,” and “Cultural Values.” The first picture regards the “Metamorphoses” portion:

A wild transformation of Iraq takes place?

As you can see, after Gilgamesh kills the forest demon known as “Huwawa,” there is a magical transformation in which “Iraq take place.” As you may guess, Iraq is never once mentioned in this story. However, this student must have done some research in order to write these three words because Gilgamesh is an ancient Sumerian myth, which would place its origin in, what is now, the southern Iraq area. Well-played student, well-played. She must have meant that the entire Mesopotamian region goes under a wild metamorphoses in which it becomes modern-day Iraq. A+?

Wait, what was Gilgamesh’s power?

This student used the best possible quote from the story that I could have hoped for, “‘Here!’ cried Gilgamesh, spread-eagling himself against the wall.” I can only imagine that the student believed that this meant that Gilgamesh had turned himself into an eagle (which I suppose should go under “Metamorphoses”). If spreading your limbs out in the X-position is really a super-power, then I would guess that there are a ton of skilled skydivers, figure skaters, dancers, gymnasts, and (Warning: lewd comment ahead) supernatural sexual savants who rival the power of the Great King Gilgamesh.

Alright, I don’t know how long it is going to last, but I am now going to try and start posting more frequently for the next few weeks, mostly because more and more homework-gold keeps falling into my lap (metaphorically speaking). As you may now know, the segment “My Students Are Trolling Me” has become an ongoing wealth of laughter for my friends and I. Here is Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. if you would like to go back and see some others. The picture below shows an essay regarding the topic: “Do you think an annual test (such as the CSAT) is fair to decide a person’s acceptance to high-level universities or should it be judged by overall academic and creative achievements?” Here was the response:

“First the levels of the test is different to students when they are in the different species…”

This is something I have been ranting about for years. These *$%# annual tests are completely prejudice against students of different species. I mean, it is impossible to argue against the fact that tests such as the CSAT make it virtually impossible for an Orangutan to outperform a human student. If this trend continues, in less than 3 years, universities all around the world will only consist of homo sapiens. I hope that governmental grants will promote species diversity in all levels of higher education.

As you all know by now, my students are really great at shocking me on a daily basis. The most recent of these hilarious assignments occurred when I asked my journalism class to bring in multiple articles from credible sources about a topic that I had given them. In this case, the topic was “primates.” Most of the students ignored the credible part of their assignment and just printed off the first few Google sites on the list, but one of the students went through Google News looking for a good article, here is what he turned in (Keep in mind that this student in 13):

Yup, A horny porn-addicted chimpanzee

I asked the student if he had read the article, and thankfully, he had not. He said he just printed it out (apparantly, sometime’s a student’s poor work ethic can work in a teacher’s favor). So, I told the student that the article was something he shouldn’t read and moved on with the class. In the chimp’s defense, who doesn’t like sex? Good on you, gal (That’s right, it’s a girl chimp).

In a different class, we were reading a story about a somewhat wealthy Northern states, African-American family that buys a gold cadillac (during the segregation period) and drives to Mississippi. The family runs into extreme racism from locals, other motorists, and police officers. In the story, the girls in the car see a sign that says, “Whites Only, Coloured not allowed.” I explained the time period to the children and about the ignorance of racism. One of the signs read, “No Negroes or Dogs Allowed.” I asked the students, “Why is this sign horrible? Why is it hurtful?” Here are the student responses:

1) I think the dogs will get hungry and maybe will starve.

2) Are they allowed to bring in cats?

Frustrated, I decided to take a different approach. I wrote on the board, “No Negroes Koreans or Dogs Allowed.” Immediately, a student raised his hand, “Teacher, that is really bad. Are you saying that Koreans and dogs are the same?” Yup, that got the job done. It just goes to show that the biggest difference between teens and adults is that teenagers completely lack empathy 90% of the time; they are just a bunch of horny chimpanzees.